Ken Livingstone Quotes

There is now a desperate need for a London-wide left caucus of those interested in the GLC and local councils so that we can compare and discuss what is happening in each borough.

I Kenneth Robert Livingstone, having been elected to the office of mayor of London, declare that I take that office upon myself, and will duly and faithfully fulfil the duties of it to the best of my judgement and ability.

World wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy.

All the politics of the post-war period was about the clash between the Soviet Union and America, and virtually all issues ended up being subordinated to that. Now, the question is, what is the most a socialist can achieve in a global economy?

The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.

Consultation is a good thing when people agree with you, and a waste of time when people don't agree with you

When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from it as possible.

To tackle climate change you don't have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live

I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers.

If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It

If I blew my nose the Daily Express and the Daily Mail would say that I am trying to spread germ warfare.

Every year the international finance system kills more people than the Second World War. But at least Hitler was mad, you know.

I liked it when we had ugly politicians who droned on about issues.

I am a socialist, a believer in rational thought and the rule of law.

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.

I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.

You can't expect to work for the Daily Mail group and have the rest of society treat with you respect as a useful member of society, because you are not.

I've met serial killers and professional assassins and nobody scared me as much as MrsT.

I employed my wife for three years to sit in the attic and type up my autobiography, 700 pages, organise everywhere I go. I'm paying the normal rate of tax on the money I take out for myself.

I just long for the day when I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lamp-posts.

I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

My administration will tackle these issues in consultation with the black communities of London.

It is all very well for people with fine arts degrees, but for ordinary people like myself, we want a statue to look like the person.

I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

I loathe and detest all this trivialisation of politics.

It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the [congestion] charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook.

The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn't protect the environment unless it's regulated, it doesn't train your workforce unless it's regulated, and it doesn't give you the long-term investment you want.

Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

The American agenda is sweeping everything before it, and although it's not perfect, the EU is better on environmental issues. It's a less rapacious form of capitalism.

Global warming could be solved by shifting three to four per cent of global GDP to pay for it.

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz.

Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help.

Polling in a general election is pretty accurate, because turnout is usually high.

The problem is that many MPs never see the London that exists beyond the wine bars and brothels of Westminster.

I would like to sound like James Mason. I reckon if I'd had a better voice I could have been prime minister. It is the most irritating voice in public life.

There needs to be radical development in equality law to create the environment to allow women to stay in work.

I feel like Galileo going before the Inquisition to explain that the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. I hope I have more success.

You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.

You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else.

Ed Miliband doesn't give a damn about what he looks like, how he dresses. He came into politics to change society.

I undertake that, in the exercise of my functions of that office I will have regard to any guidance with respect to ethical standards issued by the secretary of state under Section 66 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

Just because I am critical of the coalition doesn't mean I am anti-English. I am just anti-scumbags.

One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.

Politics is not a game. Thousands of people's jobs and services depended on what the GLC did, and they expected us to do the best we could.

The Tories had the legal right to demand extra meetings of the council but I could decide when they would be held and always called them for Friday afternoons, knowing that three or four of the richer Tories went to the country early and were not prepared to stay in the city beyond lunchtime. I realised that nothing in politics is new when I read in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars that Julius Caesar pulled the same trick when reactionaries in the senate were making his life difficult.

Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.

I feel a degree of regret that Marshall did not push on and say 'abolish the GLC' because I think it would have been a major saving and would have released massive resources for productive use.

Most kids dont get to go their parents wedding.